Chapter 4. – Thinking about Modernity, Development, and Foreign Aid
4.1. Development Discourse
The question what development was, how it should be used, or whether it should be deployed at all, was something also social scientists started thinking about in and especially after the 1960s. Development discourse emerged and questions like what defined development, were asked. Answering these questions was not easy and in the literature, writers used multiple definitions of development. From the very simple “development is good growth” and “improvement” to more complex interpretations given by social scientists. James Ferguson, for example, tried to explain development by looking at three different angles from which the questions: when would someone say “that is a developed country or society?” could be answered.179
The first option was when there was a healthy economy, industrial production, and taxes that were paid in order to build schools, hospitals, roads, etc. The second view was looking at the standard
177 Benjamin Zachariah, Developing India, An Intellectual and Social History, c. 1930-50 (New Delhi; Oxford University Press, 2005), 1-8.
178 Zachariah, Developing India, 3.
179 James Ferguson, Far from paradise, an introduction to Caribbean Development (London; Latin America Bureau, 1990), 4.
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of living of all the people from a country. Here, industrial development was less important because through industrial development, only a small fraction of the society benefited and the idea of a developed society was that the lives of all citizens improved. In the third and last option, the control, which people (also the poor), had in the organizations in their societies was examined. The idea, here was when everyone’s voice was heard, that said something about the level of development. Ferguson concludes with another important question and statement: “When talking about development, it is therefore important to ask the question: development by whom and for whom?”180 This last question
was relevant to the members of the ASC, in the Cold War and anti-imperialist context they were constantly aware where aid was coming from and why it was given.
One of the first social scientists to disclose critique on development was Ivan Illich in the early 1960s. Especially in this time, development aid was seen as something untouchable. Questioning the relevance and impact development had on Third World or “underdeveloped” societies was a taboo. In the years that followed more scholars followed Illich example and started to question development. These scholars called themselves post-development thinkers.181Illich’s main critique was the fact that
rich and developed countries saw industrialized societies as the ideal society and tried to implement this model all over the world. Hereby, the Third World countries became too dependent on mass- market goods. He thought that there was no proof that the industrialized way of living was the key to improved life. Mass goods and services even could become a danger to people and their environment, Illich believed.182In Illich’s footsteps, scholars like Arturo Escobar, Serge Latouche, Gilbert Rist, and
Theodor Shanin followed in expressing critiques on development.
Theodor Shanin believed that the mindset of the Westerners, to always want progress and modernity, was linked to two events in the early 19th century. These events were the expansion and
discovery of the world by the European travelers, whereby, new countries, new cultures, and new people were found. The second issue was the shift of perception by the Europeans, the idea of time changed from a cyclical to a linear perception. Combined these two made the idea of progress look appealing, because it made it easier to place different societies somewhere else on the timeline. On the linear timeline, there was only room to move forwards, when societies and cultures were compared with each other their places on the timeline were compared as well. How further along, how more progressed and modern a society was. To determine the level of progress, classifications followed. One of the criteria was to look how “modern” a state, culture, or society was. Western
180 Ferguson, Far from paradise, 4, 7.
181Majid Rahnema, ‘Introduction’, in: Majid Rahnema and Victoria Bawtree (eds.), The Post-Development
Reader (London; Zed Books, 1997), ix-xix, ix.
182Ivan Illich, ‘Developmentas Planned Peverty’, The text is reproduced from Chapter II of Celebration of Awareness (Marion Boyars, London, 1971), in: Majid Rahnema and Victoria Bawtree (eds.), The Post- Development Reader, 94-101, see 95.
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concepts like the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, urbanization, and colonialism all played a part in the formation of this classification system. The so-called advanced societies acted as the natural leader and saw themselves as the example of a modern and developed state. This belief in progress caused the arrogant behavior of the so-called developed states.183
Gilbert Rist also talked about progress and modernity and how this related to the arrogant attitude of the West. He believed that modernity was the new religion of the West and that development was used as an element within this religion. He argued that the Western societies behaved in an arrogant manner because they believed that their modern societies based on ration and secularity made them superior and where the example for the rest of the world. The Westerners condemned the so-called traditional societies because they did not follow the standards of the modern society. When the Western world became more secular from the Christian church, the religious element continued in another form, namely that of social beliefs. Rist argued for the similarity with religion because the idea of modernity was presented as a collective certainty and as the truth. Moreover, there was not much room for an open discussion about the idea and the effectiveness of development, modernity, and progress. The idea that societies could possibly develop and grow after a Western example, kept the belief in modernity alive. As a ritual of the new religion of modernity, Rist mentioned the many political, economic, and social summits where political leaders, economists, and other experts talked about the situation and the development in the world. 184
Serge Latouche brought the westernizing character of development forward, which he believed came also from the 19th century with industrialization and urbanization. Hereby, a feeling of
superiority of white men was established and spread all over the world together with expansions and colonialism. During the colonial period, when white men controlled large parts of the world, they tried to spread their ideas about modern civilizations. This mission started in the early 19th century, during
the First World War, some limits of the civilization mission came to the surface. Subsequently, the economic crisis of the 1930s showed the failure of the Western liberal economic model and finally with the decolonization of the colonies Europe lost its hegemony over a big part of the world. Latouche argued that one might think that the modernization mission would end here as well. However, after the de-colonialization, the civilization mission continued and Westernization emerged in the form of neo-colonialism. Progress became the new agent that expressed the supremacy of the West. Science, technology, development, and economics were used as tools to accomplish a modern civilization.
183Theodor Shanin, ‘The idea of Progress’, in: Rahnema and Bawtree (eds.), The Post-Development Reader, 65- 71, see 66-70.
184 Gilbert Rist, The History of Development, from western origins to global faith (London; Zed Books, Third Edition, 2008 (first edition 1997)), 21-24.
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Again, this meant that the west dictated the best way to live and to form a society.Therefore, Latouche believed that the characterization of being underdeveloped was a judgment of the West.185
Arturo Escobar asked the question: why the West or the industrialized nations of North America and Europe were seen as the appropriate models of post-World War 2 societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Escobar explained that this perception could emerge because development and progress were seen as sacred ideologies, which leaders from all over the world preached. Elites from both the First and the Third Worlds accepted a heavy burden of poverty, by selling Third World resources to any bidder, by neglecting nature and human dignity, by killing and torturing, and by condemning their indigenous populations. Escobar argued that, hereby, people of the Third World started to feel inferior, underdeveloped and ignored and subsequently these people started to question their own culture. The doubt about their culture and history made room for the idea of progress and hereby the wish to be modern was born. Escobar described that development first destroyed traditions and cultures, to fill this gap with the promise to become a developed country.186
Shanin feared that the process of progress would simplify and unify the social world, cultural differences and the “real” human history would disappear.187 Likewise, Rist and Latouche saw danger
in the westernization because it alienated people from their own culture, making everyone more or less the same. Latouche called the West an anti-culture, which de-cultured the world and destroyed ethnic diversity in the Global South. He thought that “Neo-colonialism, with its technical assistance and humanitarian giving, had contributed much more to deculturation than did colonialism in all its original brutality.”188 A common concern of the post-development thinkers was the belief that
development into modern societies, which happened almost all over the world, was destroying the authenticity of people, cultures, and histories.
However, there were also critiques on the post-development discourse. The main critique was the fact that post-development condemned all forms of development, without giving any alternative. Moreover, it also rejected the development that happened on the terms of the Global South itself because all forms of development were seen as Westernization. The post-development method carried a quite strong anti-western sentiment and anti-modernism ideal; however also in the Global South, there were many voices who wanted (technical) modernization. Another critique was that development, modernity, and progress were much more complex than the post-development thinkers
185 Serge Latouche, The Westernization of the World: The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive Towards
Global Uniformity (Polity Press, 1996), x-xv, 2-59.
186Arturo Escobar, ‘The Making and Unmaking of the Third World Trough Development’, in: Rahnema and Bawtree (eds.), The Post-Development Reader, 85-93.
187Theodor Shanin, ‘The idea of Progress’, 70. 188 Latouche, The Westernization of the World, 28.
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explained. The reality was not as black and white and the processes of modernization, development, and progress intertwined with people, cultures, and societies.189